Tag Archives: gagarin cosmonaut training centre

Post navigation

ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano is set to fly to the International Space Station in 2013, and his mission came a step a closer with the unveiling of his mission name and mission patch today.

Luca will spend six months on the International Space Station on Expedition 36/37 under an agreement with Italy’s ASI space agency and NASA.

A competition was opened for Italian residents to suggest a mission name and logo. Luca took time out from his busy training schedule in the run-up to his mission to present the winning entries.

Luca Parmitano

32 year-old Norberto Cioffi sent in the winning mission name ‘Volare’, meaning ‘to fly’ in Italian. The name symbolises the search for new frontiers and opportunities for discovery.

The winning logo was designed by 28-year-old Ilaria Sardella from San Giorgio Ionico in Southern Italy.

The logo was chosen because it contains many elements of Luca’s mission: the Soyuz spacecraft that will fly him to the orbital outpost, the Station itself and the colours of the Italian flag.

Luca spacewalk training

The orbits represent humans’ desire to travel beyond Earth and the Sun as well as our curiosity for knowledge. Both winners of the competition will travel to Star City to follow Luca’s training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre near Moscow, Russia.

The winners were announced at an event in Rome with Luca and the president of ASI.

Luca joined ESA’s astronaut corps in 2009. Follow the astronaut’s blog for regular updates on his training as well as updates from other ESA astronauts.

ESA’s astronauts-in-training have a busy schedule. From their base at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, they are travelling all over the world to learn the skills required to fly in space, blogging as they go.

The new astronauts are learning how to live and work on the International Space Station in the countries of all the Station’s partners: Europe, Canada, America, Japan and Russia.

You can now follow their trials and triumphs by following the blog written by the astronauts themselves: Samantha Cristoforetti, Alexander Gerst, Andreas Mogensen, Luca Parmitano, Timothy Peake and Thomas Pesquet.

Soyuz training
Andreas and Luca trained in January in Russia on the Soyuz spacecraft at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre near Moscow.

Andreas is now back in the Netherlands, where he continues working as a navigation specialist on ESA’s Lunar Lander project to the Moon.

Luca is staying on in Russia to learn the rendezvous and landing procedures in preparation for his Expedition 36 to the Station in 2013.

Thomas collecting firewood

Samantha, Luca and Thomas recently finished winter survival training, an important part of all Soyuz training. There is always the possibility that a Soyuz could descend into a remote, cold area.

All astronauts have to learn to survive in harsh climates while waiting for rescue. “The survival training is no walk in the park,” remarked Thomas. “A lot of time is spent collecting firewood to keep warm.”

Spacesuits
Thomas is still at the Gagarin centre with Timothy where they are learning to use Russian Orlan suits for spacewalks.

Should future missions require them to venture outside the Station to install new equipment or collect samples, they will need to know how to use the Orlan suits.

To simulate floating in space, they will don the suits before being lowered into a large diving pool. The Gagarin centre’s pool includes life-size mockups of Russian Station modules to make the training as realistic as possible for the astronauts.

Winter survival training

Samantha left for the USA last week to start training on robotics and spacewalks in the American spacesuits. She will be reunited with colleague Alexander, who has been in Houston since January and will stay there until March.

Alex is training for his first flight, Expedition 40, for launch in 2014. He is being introduced to the Station’s US systems as well as learning to use amateur radio equipment.

More travel
Further trips include Canada to learn all about the Station’s robotic arm and Japan to train on Japan’s Kibo module.

Their work in America, Russia and in Germany at the European Astronaut Centre is far from over: the new astronauts will return regularly for further training.

Keep up to date on their progress by following the ESA astronaut blog.

Lighting Effects: Upon wakeup, a 53S subject provided a daily sleep log entry to track his sleep patterns and wakefulness. The Lighting Effects experiment hopes to better quantify and qualify how lighting can effect habitability of spacecraft. The light bulbs on the ISS are being replaced with a new system designed for improved crew health … Continue reading […]

69 Progress (69P) Launch: 69P launched from the Baikonur, Kazakhstan this morning at 2:13am CST and achieved nominal insertion with all antennas and solar arrays deployed. Due to orbital phasing, this will be a 34-orbit rendezvous profile. 69P docking is scheduled for Thursday morning at 4:43am CST. Lighting Effects: Upon wakeup, a 53S subject began … Co […]

69 Progress (69P) Launch Abort: Over the weekend, the planned launch of 69P did not occur. The vehicle issued an abort command shortly before launch and successfully shut down the launch sequence. The root cause is under investigation, and the forward plan is in work. The next available launch opportunity is tomorrow morning, Tuesday, February … Continue […]

Rodent Research 6 (RR-6): Today the crew performed the fourth day of RR-6 operations where they conducted fixative swaps and processed a series of blood samples from the rodents. The samples from today’s activities were placed in the Minus Eighty Degree Celsius Laboratory Freezer for ISS (MELFI) for containment. The Rodent Research-6 (RR-6) mission uses … C […]